


The Raven's Eye

by mortalitasi



Series: into the forest [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Action, Angst, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The series of events that led to Anders meeting one of the most important people in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sleep Tight

He first notices the white raven the night before the attack. 

It’s sitting on a low branch, eerily close, its pale eyes blinking owlishly in the firelight, but never wavering in focus. Watching. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He’s familiar with the feeling of being watched— spent most of his life trying to stamp it out, really, and maybe it’s not entirely logical to let a damned bird disturb him so, but here he is.

Nothing seems to scare it, either. Nathaniel had shaken out the bedrolls particularly loudly to startle it, but the raven had just turned its head to him and looked at him questioningly, as if it were asking them if they really expected that to bother it. It’s a blighted nuisance, he thinks as he fiddles with a glove, but his eyes wander back to it all the same. The only one in the camp apparently fine by it all is the Warden-Commander, who is polishing her daggers as though there is nothing entirely strange about being observed by an irritatingly intelligent bird. 

"I thought scowling was my specialty."

He lifts his head to see Howe wearing that infuriatingly calm expression. When he doesn’t respond right away, a dark brow quirks upward and he snorts. “A joke, coming from you? The world must be ending.”

Howe leans back against a tree trunk and crosses his arms, glancing at the Commander before he returns his attention to the mage. “I was only wondering what happened to have inspired this sullen of a silence. You haven’t said a word since we pitched camp.”

"Feeling lonely, are we?" Anders snipes, and he sees the reactionary twitch in the muscles of Howe’s jaw. "I didn’t know you were such a man of the heart." 

"You know, it generally helps conversation not to evade every question with a snide remark," Howe snaps, more of his usual venom present in his voice this time around. 

"Taking a hint isn’t one of your strengths, I see," Anders says coolly. Nathaniel’s grimace turns into a scowl. 

"Clearly something crawled down those robes of yours and died near somewhere important. I’ll not endure this." Howe stands, dusting himself off, and walks away in the direction of his tent. 

There’s silence for a moment. An unfamiliar feeling bubbles up in him— the sting of guilt. He doesn’t like it. Obligation is something he’s never given much value to. Obligation stifles you. He’s watched it suffocate too many mages to care for it, or to want to stick to it. What matters is freedom. It’s a mantra he’s recited to himself for years. He’s gone to sleep to the very same words running circles in his head, looking at the distant stars beyond his tower window and trying to ignore the bars that obscured them. Obligation means attachment. Attachment means trouble. Trouble, trouble. 

"He was only trying to be friendly," the Commander says, and the sound of her speaking is so abrupt in the quiet that he actually startles. She’s smiling kindly when he looks up at her, but he knows that smile.

It’s the one she wears before doing things like driving a dagger between your ribs, and strangely enough, it doesn’t scare him. It just turns that simple sting of guilt into a bothersome, weighty feeling that sits at the bottom of his stomach like a stone. He can’t look at the Commander for longer than half a minute, because she’s observing him with inquisitive brown eyes that would pierce through armor if they could.

"It doesn’t come easily to him," she continues, setting one dar’missan down on its side and taking up the other. Its wicked edge gleams and glints in the firelight, throwing eerie blue shadows over Lyna’s crossed feet. Ironbark. He knows the blades can cut steel as easily as they do flesh. 

Anders knows that this is the part where he should apologize, but the words die in his throat on the way up. When was the last time he apologized? He can’t remember. 

He can still feel her eyes on him as he reaches out to pull his cloak tighter around his shoulders, the feathers of his pauldrons tickling his cheeks, though the feeling doesn’t incite a smile. This is as close as Lyna ever gets to berating anyone openly, and he sometimes wonders if it isn’t worse than being raged at. Rage is palpable, easy to react to, and though he can’t imagine her screaming or being furious enough to strike him, he can find himself wishing she will prove him wrong.

He realizes with a silent rush of fright that he’s trying to justify the possibility of ever hurting her. Is this what freedom is like? Always waiting for the next villain, always making excuses about lashing out? Perhaps if he tells himself that long enough he’ll start to believe it. Has he always been this bitter?

The bark is rough against his back as he shifts in his seat. Right from the start he’s thought the Commander was strange. It’s like she can see completely through him, all the way down to the most insignificant pettiness and the most elaborate lies.

Trying to be at ease around her is difficult when her gaze is clearer than any looking glass and to be under its sharp focus feels like every joke and smile is slipping away from him in a slow crawl. Like he’s being laid bare, bones and nerves exposed to the air. Just thinking about it makes him want to shudder. 

The Commander says nothing more as the night deepens and the clearing goes silent. Soon all he can hear is the sound of Sigrun’s soft breathing— he’ll never understand how the dwarf can sleep so heavily. She’d laid down to rest the minute after they’d pitched the tents and has been slumbering since, blissfully unaware of everything, especially that supremely disturbing bird. It’s still just sitting there, feathers unruffled, legs invisible under its snowy plumage. If it weren’t for the gentle rise and fall of its keel, he would have mistaken it for a statue. 

He turns his back stubbornly on the blasted bird and falls on his side, curling up on his bedroll without another word. He listens to the flickering of the fire and the crackle of the kindling until his mind starts to wander, and then his thoughts begin to splinter and fade and scatter.

Anders falls asleep under the long shadow of the oak trembling in the firelight, and for once his sleep is dreamless.


	2. The Rescue

The next day, it all happens very quickly. 

One moment the brush is silent and the next it’s filled with knives and teeth and dirty highwaymen— starved, ragged things with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks and madness in their spines. One of them clutches a broken, jagged shiv, and it cuts him below the eyelid, glancing his cheek, and he feels the warm film of blood slide over his nose. 

There’s an entire band of them, and the four are outnumbered three to one. Sigrun vanishes and reappears behind a bandit, and she leaves him where he falls with a hatchet lodged in his skull and the blade peeking out of one of his eyes as she moves on, blown about their little battlefield like smoke swirled by the wind. She’s vicious with her small axes, tiny but effective. They never see her coming.

A Howe-aimed arrow through the gullet takes the biggest of the men down. He lies gurgling in a pool of scarlet, stiffening fingers twitching, as Anders steps over him primly, taking care not to let the hems of his robes soak any of it in. Blood is a terrible bother to clean. 

For a while it seems like they are winning. The thieves scatter or perish, more interested in being able to rob than fighting, and only a few stragglers remain when it occurs. The boy with the shiv screams when Lyna catches his wrists— and he _is_ just a boy, Anders sees during the struggle: a wretched, filthy boy with a voice loud and shrill enough to wake the dead. The Commander is saying something, trying to get him to stop, but his hands slip through hers and Anders knows what the result is going to be long before the shiv nestles itself in the Commander’s side.

A strangled sound of surprise escapes her and the boy scrambles away from her, jabbering unintelligently before he turns and races away, blundering into the bushes headfirst. Anders doesn’t think the boy knows where he’s going.

Sigrun is the smallest and the fastest of them, so she’s at the Commander’s side before either of the other two, her hands grasping at Lyna’s upper arms. She discards her axes and tosses her helmet off, eyes wild and worried, supporting the Commander while she slides bonelessly to the forest floor.

"Don’t move, don’t move— oh, ancestors," she breathes when she sees the crimson stain creeping through the side of Lyna’s leathers and crawling between the leaves on the ground. 

"It’s al—right," Lyna says slowly, trying to lift an arm to reassure them, but all that manages to do is disorient her. A stubborn look passes over her face before it fades and she blinks once, twice, and Anders watches the focus leave her. That’s when Howe arrives, paler than Anders has ever seen him, his voice a rasp of sound.

"Commander," he says, reaching out, and when she doesn’t respond to it, "Lyna.  _Lyna!_ ” He crouches, joining the circle that's gathered around her.

The Commander smiles like the fool she is and shushes him. “Don’t sound so worried. It’s only a cut,” she tells them, but none of them believe it. “I just need some rest.”

“ _No_ ,” Howe says sharply, moving forward, taking her face between his hands, and they’re all reminded of just how slight she is because of it. “Don’t close your eyes. Lyna, look at me. Can you hear me?”

"Not so loud," she murmurs, head lolling. Strands of her hair slip between Howe’s fingers. "Head hurts."

"Don’t," Howe says again, almost pleading, and Anders is ready to retort when the bushes behind them stir and part and the last highwayman blunders into the clearing, a mace held high above his head. Sigrun shouts a mixed yammer of syllables and reaches for her too-far-away axes while Howe braces the Commander to his front and Anders turns on his knees to face the assailant— the man is so close—too close— that Anders can smell the cheap ale on his breath. He hears the wind whistling between the spikes of the mace and shuts his eyes in preparation for an impact that never comes. 

There is a disgusting crunch as a streak of white slams into the highwayman’s temple. The bandit yells and reels, the mace slipping from his hands and thudding to the ground. Anders only catches a glimpse of the raven as it wheels again and comes down talons-first, though something odd begins to happen then. 

The bird disappears in whorl of summoning magic; the glamor dies away as the final feathers melt off of the shifter’s face, and the highwayman stands gaping at the newly-made woman in front of him before one hand grasps him by the tattered collar of his tunic and the other presses itself to one temple.

Anders doesn’t quite understand what’s happening until the man begins to howl and sweat. The spell makes the apostate’s hand glow brighter than any magelight Anders has ever seen, and he’s mesmerized by it, only to be broken from his fascination a moment later by the highwayman’s eyes bursting with a whining pop and streaming down his cheeks like soft wax left too long by a roaring fire. 

Silence so thick and undisturbed reigns in the clearing that they all hear the dull thump the highwayman makes when the woman releases her hold on him and steps over the corpse lightly, her stitched skirts rustling around her legs.

She regards them with cool interest, unmoving, even when Anders turns and forfeits his breakfast into the forest loam with a loud retch. The smell of cooked, burning flesh is still in his nostrils after it, and all he can tell himself to do is not focus on the body, pretend he doesn’t know that black smoke is curling from the dead man’s mouth and ears and nose, the charred holes where his eyes had been. Had the templars looked like that under their armor when he had roasted them in it?

Sigrun draws a dagger at the woman’s approach, silent, her tattooed lips pressed thin and pinched. 

The mage just blinks at them— that same, slow, considerate blink he’d seen the raven do what seems centuries ago— and shrugs. 

"You looked like you needed the help."


	3. On Your Own

Saying no hadn’t been an option. 

Even Howe had been forced to admit that their situation was less than optimal— miles away from any road near to the Vigil, in the heart of the Wending Wood, their supplies ransacked and ruined by the bandits, and the Commander wounded and insensible: it didn’t make for a very pretty picture, Anders thinks sourly as the ache in his back sharpens into a persistent throb.

The apostate had turned on them without so much of a thought, and he’s furious at himself for having expected any sort of camaraderie simply because they shared common ability in magic. The woman lives in a hovel, he reminds himself. It’d be like asking a dog to recite the Chant.

"A sorry predicament," she’d said, regarding them with the unsettling pale raven’s eyes. "How fortunate that you came  upon me."

 _You came upon us_ , he thinks sullenly, teeth gritting.  _Like a bloody vulture._  

It wouldn’t have taken the best of scholars to catch her meaning. Either refuse her offer and stay outside to weather the bitterly cold night that was sure to come, alone and friendless— or accept her conditions and be given shelter under terms that they were not to reveal anything of her existence once they were returned to Vigil’s Keep. 

"And what’s stopping us from accepting and lying about keeping your secret?" Sigrun had responded easily, miles ahead of tongue-tied Howe and a disbelieving Anders. 

"Only this," the apostate had said quietly, reaching into her robes and pulling out a glass vial on a delicate, glittering chain. She’d bent before them all and they’d watched as she filled the vial with the Commander’s blood that had been pooling at her feet. Her fingertips had been capped with scarlet when she corked the vial and let it fall against her breast, glinting red and black in the setting forest light. They’d agreed readily with her after that, he remembers with disgust. 

 _Who hauls vials around with them, anyway?_  he asks himself as he shoots a glance around the tiny room again. Maybe if he looks at the place enough, or blinks a hundred more times, the cramped accommodations will change— it’s wishful thinking, he knows, but even mages are allowed to dream. His eyes drift from the wooden wall to the floor covered in patchwork rugs and the worn bedroll laid out in front of him, the one the apostate had set the Commander down on when Howe had carried her in.

Her breathing isn’t as shallow as it was then, and he can’t hear the bubbling of fluid in her inhalations any more. It’d been quick, dangerous work, having to remove the shiv, but Anders finds he works best under pressure, and to say what had been urging him on during the extraction had been pressure would be the understatement of the age. 

He’d been surprised when the apostate had set out a basket of dried healing herbs at his side without question, and he supposes it’d shown plainly enough on his face that she’d thought clarifying would be proper. 

"You carry bandages," she’d said without any particular emotion. "And you smell like elfroot."

The nine-year-old response would have been ‘ _and you stink of bird poop_ ,’ but Anders is no longer nine and as such he’d refrained from answering in that vein.

"I think she’s doing better," Sigrun says softly, drawing his attention. The dwarf brushes the hair out of Lyna’s peaceful face and after second thought pulls the blanket covering the Commander up a little higher. She doesn’t stir.

"She is," he answers, watching the rise and fall of the Commander’s even breaths move the blanket. "The fever’s broken, which means the infection is passing. With any luck, she’ll be up and about soon."

Sigrun smiles a bit. “Well, someone will be glad to hear that news.”

"If you have any love for Andraste’s frilly knickerweasels, you won’t wake him," Anders says pointedly. "You might not mind being glared at all day, but I find it a most unfulfilling pastime." 

"Don’t worry," Sigrun tells him, hiding a yawn behind her palm. "A bronto stampede couldn’t get him up now. He had to crack sometime."

"I always thought he’d be a snorer," Anders remarks idly and listens to her snort in humor. "Come now, don’t tell me you didn’t think so. That nose of his is like a horn. I’m still surprised it doesn’t toot the morning hymns."

"I’d like to see you say that to his face," she says, readjusting a threadbare pillow behind her back. They take turns leaning against it when they can’t stand the wooden wall anymore. 

"Ah, well, breathing is a passion of mine, you see," he mumbles back, "I don’t think I could ever give it up."

Now she grins, teeth white against the ink. “Too bad. Some of us could use the hot air.”

"Ha and ha, you are so very funny," he says without any sort of recognizable mirth, and shakes his head when she laughs under her breath anyway. They fall into a companionable silence and he is left with the exciting task of, once again, contemplating the ramshackle floorboards. Some even have a hint of greenery growing between them, and he wonders how the apostate can even manage to call this place home.

She’d seemed happy enough bunched up on her own little cushion the first day she’d brought them here, leading them through brambles and bushes that stood as high as his chest and sometimes even taller. The cottage— or, he supposes, what  _had_  been a cottage once— is nestled into the curve of a steep hill, so deep into the incline that he’s willing to wager most of the place is underground. 

The Commander had been in a sorry state then. Hardship has a way of making even the space of a few days feel like the sprawling crawl of centuries, and that first night when they’d all sat around the Commander’s bedroll, watching her shake with fever and drift in and out of awakening, the hours had dragged along like years.

The longest she’d gone without falling into another nightmare had been thirty minutes, and the second time the screaming had been so loud that the apostate had come inside to tell them to find a way to silence her or the matter would be handled accordingly. No one had asked what she meant by that, so Howe had held the Commander’s wrists until the beating stopped and her crying died away. 

It’s been most decidedly  _not_  noisy business since then, and he’s grateful for it. The third night the Commander had turned over restlessly in her sleep and said “Ashalle” into her pillow again, he’d finally asked. 

"Anyone you know?" he’d said to Sigrun, and she’d just shrugged. Howe, though, had looked so clearly guilty of the knowledge that neither of them had had the heart to wrest the answer from him. 

"Here," Sigrun says, breaking him out of his contemplation. He blinks at her a few times before he realizes she’s offering him the cushion. 

"Thanks," he blurts, the word unfamiliar and strange on his tongue. He’s not had much use for ‘thank you’ in his life, and having to learn to mean it is more difficult than he would care to admit. Sigrun just looks at him for too long a moment, but just when he thinks he’s going to falter and break, she turns away and goes back to huddling on her side, head pillowed on her arm.

He is so relieved  by the lack of obligation to reciprocate that for a heartbeat or two he forgets to breathe. The cushion almost helps his back forget it’s been three nights he’s had to endure this squatting— he’s had worse, of course— there’s  _always_  worse, but the constant looming presence of the apostate makes even superlative descriptors seem lacking.

She’s always around a corner, watching, waiting, just silently following you with those dead fish eyes, he thinks testily, only the thought of that pale stare making the skin on his back roughen with gooseflesh. 

All at once he feels the room is too small and the air too close, and he’s scrambling to get up, careful not to tread on the Commander, choking out a short “I’m going out” to Sigrun’s murmured question. He ducks under the hanging charms the apostate has separating the main den of the cottage from its tiny hallway.

Bits of dried rowan and cedar tied with red string scratch at his cheeks when he passes through the curtain of ornaments. There are even more wards on the creaking front door— juniper berries and wild cinnamon and marigolds woven into a wreath of rosemary that rustles like a death rattle when he shuts the door behind him. The smell of cinnamon is still burning in his nostrils when he takes a deep breath of the evening air and lets it escape him in a puff of white condensation. 

"Oh, Maker," he says to no one, dragging a hand across his face and grimacing when parts of his back he didn’t know existed pop back into place.  He stands alone in the darkening clearing for about three minutes before the sensation of being stalked returns to haunt him, and sure enough, when he turns, there she is, standing in the rapidly encroaching gloom.

She’s not a particularly tall or short woman, which he finds odd, but not odder than her robes: they’re a bizarre mix of fabrics and strips of leather that shouldn’t really work stitched together at all, a melting pot of little scraps of linen and down. There’s even a small patch of what he’s certain is silk just below her right hip, shining a dark blue in the sunset light. 

"And how is your leader doing?" 

Her voice sounds out of place in the brittle silence, too thick and languid for the tension he feels. She speaks like she’s trying to talk past a mouth full of treacle— Howe had said that it was a Starkhaven accent, northernly and harsh, and had described the place as a city of opulence when Sigrun had asked about it. He would know, having gallivanted around the Marches. The apostate in question, though, could not look like less of a fit for Starkaven, all lank and no muscle; there’s nothing especially grand about her, only especially  _unusual._  

He glances at her and stretches his hands behind him, listening to his knuckles crack. “As well as she can be doing with a hole the size of a nug’s nose in her side,” he says, shrugging, and when there’s no response, he looks back to see a furrow has formed between her dark brows. 

"What is a… _nug_?” she asks, and he’s not quick enough to stop himself from gaping immediately. Of course she doesn’t know, you moron, he thinks— she lives in a little hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere in the Wending Wood, and probably believes the Blight’s still on. He just sighs loudly and pinches the bridge of his nose, as if it’ll somehow magically help. 

"It’s a long story," Anders finally replies, a grimace tugging at the corner of his mouth. How does one go around explaning the nature of a nug, anyway? The apostate shrugs shortly, her shoulders peeking out for an instant underneath the shroud of her hair, which, without a doubt, is the most curious thing about her.

She can’t be more than three or four years his junior and yet her hair is the sheer white of bleached bones, heavy and long, hanging easily to the beginning slopes of her waist (well, what slopes he can see under those hideous robes). Were he stupider, he’d have already tried touching it. ‘Were’ being the key word there, mind you. Touching things that weren’t his was one of the first habits he’d learned to drop, and quickly. 

"I see," she says, tone clipped. She crosses her arms and frowns at him in a way that could put some of Howe’s most disapproving stares to shame. The light is lower now, and it makes the hair falling around her face look ghostly. Just the sight of her staring irritates him so that it is all he can do not to look away. 

"What?" he says back, and it comes out far more snappish than he intends it to. He curses himself quietly for it and waits. 

"One would think a guest would be less short with their host," the apostate remarks acidly, arms still crossed. "At least the dwarf can pretend to like me well enough. You and the sour-faced man are horrible actors." 

"Sigrun likes castaways," he’s answering before he can think it through, and the apostate’s brows climb so high they’re almost hiding in her hairline. 

Her clear eyes narrow at him. “If that was an attempt at reparations, it was a miserable one.”

"And if it wasn’t?"

Sweet Andraste, why can’t he just  _shut his mouth_?

The apostate’s lips skin away and upward in a vicious smile, her teeth appearing between them like bone peeking out of a wound. It sends goosepimples racing up his arms. 

"Then it’ll save me the trouble of feeling guilty when I turn you inside out," she says, and a pulse of mana flattens the grass around her with a silent whoosh. 

His heart jumps and races as the thrill of magic washes over him, but he does not move. He holds her gaze, steady, not flinching even when the whorling mana stirs the feathers of his pauldrons and blows the hair back from his face. She stands there, rigid and unforgiving, only for a heartbeat longer before the power in the air dies away abruptly and he’s left feeling breathless from the lack of weight on his shoulders. The apostate glares at him in what he supposes is accusation before she whirls on her heel and walks away— just like that. She disappears into the shadows by the cottage, and the last he sees of her is a white, glinting wisp. 

The outside seems to lose its charm after that. He lingers around enough to watch the horizon drink up the last of the sunset before retreating to the cottage and its cramped living room again, resigned to his apparent destiny of watching people sleep but getting none of it for himself. It’s only a few precious minutes after Sigrun sits up to welcome him that they notice it— the Commander’s hand twitches at her side, fingers curling, and Sigrun gasps when Lyna’s eyes flutter open for the first time in days. He’s never been so glad to see someone awake, he thinks as the Commander blinks.

"Sigrun…?" Her voice is hoarse with disuse. She grimaces when she moves her shoulders and her pointed ears twitch, moving back and up. The familiarity of it makes him realize how different she is when she is conscious, and he admits to himself that he is relieved that she’s back. 

"What happened?" Lyna rasps, swallowing roughly. "Where am I? … And where is my shirt?" 

Sigrun laughs a watery, happy laugh, one reserved for narrow escapes and close shaves. 

"It’s about time," Anders says. "Howe was getting unbearable."

"Nathaniel," she murmurs, as if she’s only now remembering things that she should have already known. "Is he—?"

"He’s alright," Sigrun interjects before the worry can drag on. "A bit cranky, like Sparky said, but alright."

"Good," Lyna sighs, setting her head back down on her pillow, relaxing again. "That’s good."

And for once, Anders is inclined to agree with her. 

—

The day they leave, they awake to find the cottage deserted. 

There is no trace of the apostate anywhere they look. The door hangs open listlessly, squeaking frightfully on its old hinges and the charms in the hallways rattle and clink the same as ever, but the place is empty. Somehow they all know she is gone. 

They gather their things without fuss and are moving out by the time the sun is halfway to his zenith in the sky. Howe is hovering around the Commander like an anxious mother hen, never letting her out of sight for too long. The third time she assures him she can walk perfectly well, thank you, despite the little limp, Anders rolls his eyes so obviously that Howe notices. Sigrun calls them kids and whacks him on the arm with her pack. 

He’s in the middle of complaining that she hits far too hard for someone her size when a rustle of leaves abovehead compels him to stop and turn.

Sigrun stops as well, and they both watch as a white raven flies from the green and into the autumn sky, wheeling around them once before soaring away, the sun bright on its pale wings. 


End file.
